


Sanctuarium

by rx_rx



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Other, Torture, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 02:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20323750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rx_rx/pseuds/rx_rx
Summary: A genetic disorder that has been kept dormant for centuries in his family through artificial suppression begins to show signs of expression in Jack. When Jack is four years old, the dormant "witchcraft" is awakened — but at a terrible cost.





	Sanctuarium

“For this mediation, we need to go someplace where the runes here can’t suppress your magic as strongly as they do here. Would you like to take a walk and get some coffee?”

“I don’t like coffee.”

“I’m still inviting you to come with me.”

It was more than that, Jack realized. Noel was ordering him. 

They walked the streets of the city to a local coffee shop. It was surprising how quickly the effect of the runes waned out here. Jack could feel his heart racing. “I don’t like it out here,” he told Noel. It reminded him too much of the life he once. He remembered his parents — what he did to them. 

The runes hadn’t only suppressed his magic, they had made him feel numb. The rush he felt out here was overwhelming. 

“Stop questioning your identity or the reality of the world out here.” Noel prompted him. “Remember the mediations I’ve taught you. Now is the time to practice.”

“My heart is racing,” Jack tried to tell him. Noel did not appear concerned as he opened the door to the coffee shop and beckoned him to walk ahead, but he did seem annoyed when Jack would not walk through the door. Jack covered a hand over his beating chest, blocking other people from moving in and out. “Why is my heart racing? I can’t…I can’t stop it.”

“Stop panicking.” Noel clasped his palms around his shoulders, holding Jack together. People held the door and helped them pass, eyeing them with sympathy as if Jack was some poor, wretched soul. He hated it. He hated them all! Noel led Jack to a stool and set him there. “Stop this,” Noel scolded. “Have my meditations taught you nothing? Breathe.” 

Jack focused on breathing and pinched one nostril as he did it. He inhaled, pinching the other nostril as he exhaled. It was a simple breathing technic that helped center himself. 

Awareness, inhale.

Exhale, release. 

Noel watching him as he did it. He brushed the fringe of Jack’s bangs out of his eyes. “Concentrate on the emptiness of this world. In this emptiness, allow your mind to be absorbed.” This was a common practice Noel had taught him many times before to help clear his mind and focus. 

To be honest, Jack didn’t understand the concepts of emptiness and the imagination of the unreal that Noel constantly preached to him. Jack dropped his arms to his side. “This is stupid,” he muttered.

Noel sighed, sorely disappointed. “If that is what you believe, then that is the reality that will exist.”

Jack groaned and tapped his forehead against the bar counter. 

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Noel patted his shoulder.

Jack muttered a “yeah, whatever” into the counter.

When Noel returned, he held two drinks. A black coffee for himself and a large mug of hot chocolate. Jack inched his palms under his face and balled them into fists, resting his head against his hands. He watched the steam rise from the drink and melt the soft peaks of whipped cream. 

“In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer,” Noel whispered. “And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back.”

Jack lapped the whipped cream off his hot chocolate and took a drink. 

“Please take these exercises seriously, Jack.”

“I’m listening!” Jack insisted.

“Albert Camus,” Noel continued. “A French philosopher. Read his books.”

Jack took another drink.

“Your aunt will be coming tomorrow to visit as well,” Noel informed him.

“What—!” Jack sputtered his drink. “Why is she coming?”

“She is your legal guardian. You may be under my observation, but you are still under her care.”

Jack stirred his hot chocolate. “What did May tell you about me?”

“Hmm?”

“The night you took me from the hospital, May said you ordered her to read my mind. What did she tell you?”

Noel chuckled softly, sadly to himself. “She told you that, did she?”

“Yeah.”

“It was a basic assessment. The outcome of her assessment would determine whether or not I should protect you or exterminate you.”

“You were sent to kill me?”

“The possibility was always there.”

“Maybe she got it wrong,” Jack said. “Maybe you should have.”

“That is what she told me to do,” Noel told him darkly. “Be glad you’ve been as cooperative as you’ve been. You and I may not be sitting here now otherwise.”

Jack stared questionably into his hot chocolate. Bits of cocoa and warm milk swirled at the bottom.

“Let me ask you something,” Noel prompted. “In your meditations, do you ever have any…” he turned his wrist in the air, searching for the right word. “…hallucinations?”

“Umm.” It was a strange question to ask. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Any dreams?”

“Dreams?” Jack did consider this now. It took him until now to realize that since he had been staying with Jim, he had not had a single dream he could remember. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

Noel nodded. “It must be the runes. They suppress any premonitions you might be having. There is one last thing I want to show you. It’s why we’re here,” Noel started, setting down into his coffee that he barely drank. 

“Right,” Jack remembered. “The mediation."

“No, forget the mediation. That’s not the real reason I risked bringing you out into the real world here,” Noel took Jack’s hand and wrapped a beaded bracelet around it, being very careful how he knotted and tied it. “I wanted to give you this. It would not have been right to do this back at headquarters. This is an apotropaic charm to avert bad luck and evil influences,” he explained. “It is still difficult for you to visualize an object when there is no object to be grasped, and that’s okay. I was never expecting you to master these meditation exercises in only a few months. Object-meditation will still be good practice for you to have a foundation. Once the mind can stay focused on a single object, it will become easier for it to release into a place of emptiness.”

Jack did not fully understand, but he nodded anyway. “Okay.”

Noel added one last detail. “It might also help you to take a shot of vodka.”

Jack watched Noel continued to tie the bracelet, unsure if he was being serious.

Noel stared him dead in the eye. “That wasn’t a joke. If your mind is in a bad place, it will help you.”

“Okay.”

Noel leaned away, seeming satisfied with his work.

Jack examined the bracelet. The warm, incandescent lights inside the coffee shop gleamed against the dark, gunmetal hues of the beads. “Did you make it?”

Noel shot him a disgruntled look. “I was given these beads for my own protection by an old sage, but I gave them up to someone else instead….someone young, inexperienced…unsure of his place in the world, like you. She gave them back to me recently.”

“Why?”

“Claimed wearing them made his work more difficult. She’s a bounty hunter. The things she hunts would be repelled by a charm like that. That’s why I gave them to her. Guess it worked a little too well for her tastes.”

“She works for you too?” Jack asked.

“We tried to recruit her, but no. She works for himself. Makes better money that way, I guess. She collects on a few of the bounties we place and she’s smart about what she hunts. When it comes to bounty hunters, most of them are sleazy halfwits. Not Laelia though. I’ve told her to get out of his line of work and find a new profession, but she won’t. It’s a family business.”

Laelia.

There was something familiar about that name.

#

The next day, Jack was taken to an underground level in the headquarters. Noel did not accompany him here. Black, uniformed agents kept him surrounded at all times. They were armed with pistols, guns, and knives — charmed and blessed with runes and wards, Jack had no doubt.

The room he was taken no runes, which was strange since every other area Jack had been allowed to enter in the facility was protected by some sort of rune. Not here. Jack felt the release instantly like a tourniquet had been untied from our his chest similar to when he and Noel had stepped foot into the outside world yesterday.

He was led into a chamber. A cold, fluorescent lightbulb glowed from pendant light fixture hanging to alternating beams lining the ceiling. The floors smelled like chlorine and bleach. The walls, sterile and white. Multiple doors lined the chamber, leading down corridors and other rooms. In the main chamber, there were desks and shelves stacked with monitors and computers. Workers moved around the chamber quietly, pressing buttons and analyzing data from different monitors. 

A man in a white lab coat was waiting for them. He withdrew a syringe. 

“Wait,” Jack stopped him. He hated needles. The man stopped. “Is my aunt here? I heard she might be coming.”

An agent spoke to him then. His eyes were like seawater, the sort of water where you could only sink. He observed Jack as if waiting for him to react in some way. “You’re in our custody now.” 

He grabbed Jack’s wrist suddenly, tugged the sleeve of his shirt and snapped the apotropaic charm from his wrist. Each gunmetal bead was knotted in place, so the bracelet remained intact, but Jack felt the loss all the same.

“No,” Jack tried to say, wanting it back. “It was a gift.”

The agent laughed, turning the bracelet over in his palm with an amused curiosity. “We’ll keep it safe for you. Don’t you worry.”

The man in the white lab coat pricked him with the needle. 

Suddenly — abruptly, he collapsed. 

Jack hit the cement floor, aware that he had been stabbed with something. A wave of exhaustion and dizziness hit him full-force nearly made him sick. His thoughts sloshed around sluggishly in his head as he faintly registered the burning prick in his arm.

Uniformed agents surrounded him now. None of them appeared concerned. He focused on the bracelet Noel had given him. The man who took it from him unceremoniously ground the beads between his thumb and finger. 

_“…I think it’s too much for him…”_

_“…could the Human Tetra-9 Gene mutated…?”_

_“…we don’t want him to hurt himself…”_

This seemed important. Jack willed himself awake, but he felt himself slipping under. He couldn’t fight it.

_“…run the tests as planned…”_


End file.
